Arkham Horror: South End of Town

I spent most of my writing day yesterday working on encounters. I posted my work with the Southside encounters (see my last entry) and after that, finished the encounters for the French Hill, Miskatonic University, and Uptown neighborhoods before leaving off most of the way through Rivertown. There, I finished the Black Cave and General Store, and the first encounter in the Graveyard.

Where I can, I bring over most of the details of previous encounters, and then tweak the results and whatever the requested skill checks are. In my initial versions of the encounters, there are sixteen skill checks requested across seventy-two encounters (four neighborhoods means twelve locations, six encounters per location). That’s about twenty, twenty-five percent of encounters asking for skill checks.

It’s kind of nice, actually. It straddles the line between the sixteen percent you get if one out of six encounters asks for a skill check, and the thirty-three percent you get if one in three encounters asks for a skill check. Totally inadvertent, but it’s the kind of thing I wish I could take credit for doing intentionally. Also, there’s a consistent theme to the checks requested — Luck and Lore or Fight and Will so far.

Actually, having a specific set of skills to write checks toward has been a big help. It gives me an angle or a direction to write in — say there’s a panic at the disco, if the disco is downtown, you make a Luck check to avoid the stampede. If the disco is around midtown, you make a Fight check to stay on your feet and get out, or you make a Will check to help calm people down.